3 ms·

I love it. We had servers, then we had clouds, and now we have personal clouds. Uh, isn't that a server?

by mchahn 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago
Not quite, it's still someone else that takes care of the physical aspect and the hardware fail-over for you. Even so the distinction is becoming more and more blurry. The long term point of convergence is that the whole concept of a 'machine' will go away as far as the cloud is concerned. It will still involve machines but you won't know (or care) about how many of them and where they are located. Something along the lines of Heroku, only then a bit more generic. Computing-by-the-yard, if you wish.
- api 11y ago
  But if you care about privacy or security, you do care where they are located. If they're located on your property, then they're protected by 200+ years of case law (in many countries). If not, then you have no protection save the company's privacy policy and willingness to enforce it in the face of government pressure or commercial temptation to sell your data.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Awesome point. With all of the talking about anonymity, crypto, etc, which are all ephemeral things, one of the strongest things that you have going for you as a US resident is an object inside the perimeter of your home.
    - robotresearcher 11y ago
      I'd trust strong crypto more than the law. I don't leave piles of cash in my house despite the law against taking it.
      - Spooky23 11y ago
        Generally speaking, the law wins.
        robotresearcher 11y ago
        That's true. But good crypto can also protect you in the outlier cases. If someone is taking your stuff they either disregard the law or they are the law. Crypto protects you at least a bit in both cases.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    The US, UK, and most nations friendly to the US are not those countries. There have been too many cases of police and/or security services rolling up at private addresses or small offices, bundling all the hardware they find into a van, and forcing innocent people to spend huge sums on lawyers to have any hope of getting it back. A box on your desk is not the right answer to this problem. Some kind of massively redundant disintermediated public data network might be, but we don't really have one of those yet.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      To be fair this is not new, a truck pulling up and movers taking all the filing cabinets (or slapping government seals on them) is the way it used to be done. If your local server filesystems are encrypted, then it's actually safer from that sort of thing than the file cabinets used to be.
jelveh 11y ago
Exactly, I believe there's a clear cycle going on (mainframes - pc - clouds - personal clouds). Fueled by: - moores law (massive compute power and storage at cheap prices) - bandwidths growing - new tools and devices that create constant streams of data (smartphones, collaborative & filesharing tools etc.) - commoditization of our most-used online tools (see dropbox) - a desire to have one integrated point of access/control and a raising awareness of how important it is to own/control our data (caused in part by constant news coming out on hacks, data breaches and how basically data companies are the new oil companies) Yes, it's a server :) ps. I'm one of the founders
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  The article refers to 'private cloud', and you refer to 'personal clouds'. From reading the rest of the article, though, it appears this is a single on-premise server. 'Cloud' usually refers to some abstraction above the physical hardware layer, that allows you to not worry about the fate of a single physical computer. This seems to be the opposite of that. What do you mean by 'cloud'?
sharemywin 11y ago
no because it sits on your desk.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>now we have personal clouds. Uh, isn't that a server? I expect the next generation will be the mobile personal cloud. What do you call a disruption that re-rupts something previously disrupted?

I love it. We had servers, then we had clouds, and now we have personal clouds. Uh, isn't that a server?

by mchahn 11y ago

I love it. We had servers, then we had clouds, and now we have personal clouds. Uh, isn't that a server?

Not quite, it's still someone else that takes care of the physical aspect and the hardware fail-over for you. Even so the distinction is becoming more and more blurry. The long term point of convergence is that the whole concept of a 'machine' will go away as far as the cloud is concerned. It will still involve machines but you won't know (or care) about how many of them and where they are located. Something along the lines of Heroku, only then a bit more generic. Computing-by-the-yard, if you wish.

api 11y ago
But if you care about privacy or security, you do care where they are located. If they're located on your property, then they're protected by 200+ years of case law (in many countries). If not, then you have no protection save the company's privacy policy and willingness to enforce it in the face of government pressure or commercial temptation to sell your data.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Awesome point. With all of the talking about anonymity, crypto, etc, which are all ephemeral things, one of the strongest things that you have going for you as a US resident is an object inside the perimeter of your home.
  - robotresearcher 11y ago
    I'd trust strong crypto more than the law. I don't leave piles of cash in my house despite the law against taking it.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      Generally speaking, the law wins.
      - robotresearcher 11y ago
        That's true. But good crypto can also protect you in the outlier cases. If someone is taking your stuff they either disregard the law or they are the law. Crypto protects you at least a bit in both cases.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The US, UK, and most nations friendly to the US are not those countries. There have been too many cases of police and/or security services rolling up at private addresses or small offices, bundling all the hardware they find into a van, and forcing innocent people to spend huge sums on lawyers to have any hope of getting it back. A box on your desk is not the right answer to this problem. Some kind of massively redundant disintermediated public data network might be, but we don't really have one of those yet.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    To be fair this is not new, a truck pulling up and movers taking all the filing cabinets (or slapping government seals on them) is the way it used to be done. If your local server filesystems are encrypted, then it's actually safer from that sort of thing than the file cabinets used to be.

jelveh 11y ago

Exactly, I believe there's a clear cycle going on (mainframes - pc - clouds - personal clouds). Fueled by: - moores law (massive compute power and storage at cheap prices) - bandwidths growing - new tools and devices that create constant streams of data (smartphones, collaborative & filesharing tools etc.) - commoditization of our most-used online tools (see dropbox) - a desire to have one integrated point of access/control and a raising awareness of how important it is to own/control our data (caused in part by constant news coming out on hacks, data breaches and how basically data companies are the new oil companies) Yes, it's a server :) ps. I'm one of the founders

rahimnathwani 11y ago
The article refers to 'private cloud', and you refer to 'personal clouds'. From reading the rest of the article, though, it appears this is a single on-premise server. 'Cloud' usually refers to some abstraction above the physical hardware layer, that allows you to not worry about the fate of a single physical computer. This seems to be the opposite of that. What do you mean by 'cloud'?

sharemywin 11y ago

no because it sits on your desk.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

>now we have personal clouds. Uh, isn't that a server? I expect the next generation will be the mobile personal cloud. What do you call a disruption that re-rupts something previously disrupted?